Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF is a 400mm super tele lens that adopts catadioptric type optical design. This type of gear is suitable for travel photography since the lens is compact and lightweight, and yet will help you to capture far objects that cannot be reached by standard zoom lenses.

Taking in consideration these super tele capabilities, we decided to challenge this lens in shooting historical buildings and particularly capturing architectural elements on these buildings that convey different historical and cultural aspects of the past.

In order to show how Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF lens can be convenient for the travel photographer we asked Italian photographer and Tokina ambassador Alessandro Di Lago to walk the streets of Gorizia city (Italy) and capture in close up some decors and objects on the historical buildings.

Let's take a virtual tour to this place and learn some history through the local architecture!

The Palazzo Attems Petzenstein, situated in the city centre near Piazza della Vittoria, was erected by the Attems family in the first half of the eighteenth-century.

The structure, built to the design of architect Nicolò Pacassi, characterized by a style of transition between Baroque and Rococo, underwent Neoclassical renovation in the first half of the nineteenth century, making the original features of the façade unrecognizable. The seven statues that surmount it, representing subjects of the Olympus, are by sculptor Giovanni Battista Mazzoleni from Bergamo.

A far view of the St. Ignatius' Church bell towers surmounted by two bronze "onion domes", seen from Via Carducci.

St. Ignatius' Church, which overlooks Piazza della Vittoria, was built by the Jesuits between 1654 and 1747.

The façade is the result of the genius of Christoph Tausch. The three niches, placed above the three entrances, contain the statues of the saints: St. Ignatius at the centre, St. John the Baptist on the right and St. Joseph on the left.

The imposing façade of St. Ignatius' Church is then completed by two bell towers surmounted by two bronze "onion domes" present in many other churches of northern Europe as well.

Founded in early medieval times, probably in the XI° century, the Castle was damaged, destroyed and estructured many times in the course of centuries, and was finally restored to its original aspect by well carried out restoration work in 1937.

The Castle of Gorizia is today a robust and articulate construction in the shape of a pentagon around the wide Court of the Lanzi.

Alessandro Di Lago, Tokina ambassador, 2021.